The Grim Reaper Award for Saying Conservatives Want You to Die

Winner

Paul Krugman (64 points)

CNN’s Gloria Borger: “[House Budget Chairman Paul] Ryan became popular by pushing the unpopular, things like killing his colleagues' pork projects, or trying to revamp Social Security, and eventually change Medicare into a program of vouchers for private insurers....”

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: “To be a little melodramatic, the voucher would kill people, no question....The cuts in Medicare that he’s proposing, the replacement of Medicare by a voucher system, would in the end mean that tens of millions of older Americans would not be able to afford essential health care. So that counts as cruelty to me.”

— From a profile of Ryan that aired on CNN’s Stories: Reporter, September 25. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-up

Chris Matthews (61 points)

“Most people who follow the news and watch the newspapers every day and watch television shows like this on Fox or this network, MSNBC, or anywhere, on CNN, they — those most attuned to this debate over the budget are either retired or close to it....Let them [Republicans] offer a big slash in Medicare, which is going to kill half the people who watch this show.”

Diane Sawyer / Jake Tapper (35 points)

Diane Sawyer: “Tough choices were on the table today as dozens of House Republicans went to the White House....Hovering over the meeting in that room, the stories of cuts already made and their consequences.”

Correspondent Jake Tapper: “On Monday, first responders in Alameda, California, stood by as a suicidal man walked into the Bay. Why? Due to budget cuts, they no longer train for water rescues. So they watched 53-year-old Raymond Zack drown....The problem is even bigger on the federal level. In Washington, D.C., Republicans say with $125 billion in new federal debt each month, the federal government needs to make even deeper cuts. They proposed cutting this year $35 million from the Food Safety Inspection Service, responsible for maintaining the safety of meat, poultry and eggs.”

Martin Bashir (31 points)

“John Boehner and his Republican majority decided to gut the FDA’s food safety and inspection service. First, slashing $87 million from its budget and then another $35 million from the USDA for good measure. Cut, cut, cut. And now the results are in. Sixteen people have lost their lives. Close to 100 are sick. Republicans in Congress talk proudly of their commitment to laissez-faire economics, where government gets out of the way and everything works perfectly. You try telling that to those who ate melon with a side of listeria.”

Mark Bittman (29 points)

“I stopped eating on Monday and joined around 4,000 other people in a fast to call attention to congressional budget proposals that would make huge cuts in programs for the poor and hungry....These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they’d barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now.”

— New York Times food writer Mark Bittman in a March 30 op-ed, “Why We’re Fasting.”